Introduction: Community and Creative Research. Developing Participatory Methodologies

Abstract

In September 2016, we organized a roundtable entitled “Community engaged cultural research: an emerging agenda of practice” at the 9th Midterm Conference of the ESA Research Network Sociology of the Arts in Porto, Portugal. The authors sharing their research during that session challenged us to go further and publish our experiences with society-friendly research in a variety of cultural contexts, practices, backgrounds and beliefs. By choosing the theme of “community and creative research”, this thematic issue of Conjunctions has gathered experiences from around the world (Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Portugal, Switzerland, Argentina and Cyprus) on different approaches to democratic practice using the lens of cultural participation. It feeds on the intersection of action research work performed by academics, activists, artist, theorists and citizens, who study and work within different sectors of our societies through participatory methodologies. They all share the desire to transform realities, defne new possibilities of solidarity development, encourage social and cultural creativity, and of course to strengthen individual self-esteem